


i/ 



THE MENACE 

OF A 

PREMATURE 
PEACE 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 

FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



Puhlished by the 

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 

130 WEST 42d STREET NEW YORK 






1^1 8 



THE MENACE OF A PREMATURE PEACE 

I>v William Howard Taft 

WE are engaged in the greatest war of history to secure per- 
manent world peace. We are fighting for a definite purpose, 
and that is the defeat of German mihtarism. If the Prussian 
mihtary caste retains its power to control the mihtary and foreign poHcy 
of Germany after the war, peace will not be permanent, and war will 
begin again when the chauvinistic advisers of the Hohenzollern dynasty 
deem a conquest and victory possible. 

Our Allies have made a stupendous effort and have strained their 
utmost capacity. Unready for the war, they have concentrated their 
energy in preparation. In this important respect they have defeated 
the plan of Germany "in shining armor'' to crush her enemies in their 
unreadiness. 

But the war has not been won. Peace now, even though it be made 
on the basis of the restoration of the statifs quo, "without indemnities 
and without annexations," would be a failure to achieve the great purpose 
for which the Allies have made heartrending sacrifice. Armaments would 
continue for the next war, and this war would have been fought in vain. 
The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of billions' worth of the 
product of men's labor, would be wasted. 

He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not see the stake 
for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German military autocracy 
still to control the destinies of all of us as to peace or war. Those who 
favor permanent world peace must oppose with might and main the 
proposals for peace at this juncture in the war, whether made in socialistic 
councils, in pro-German conferences or by Pope Benedict. That the 
Pontiff of the greatest Christian Church should wish to bring to an end 
a war in which millions of its communion are on both sides is to be 
expected. That he should preserve a difficult neutrality is also natural. 
That his high purpose is to save the world from further suffering goes 
without saying. But the present is not the opportunity of an intervening 
peacemaker who must assume that compromise is possible. 



4 The; Me;nace; o^ a Premature Peace 

_ The Allies are fightino^ for a principle the maintenance 

NO TIME POR o o r r 

COMPROMISE ^^ which affects the future of civilization. If they do 

not achieve it they have sacrificed the flower of their 
youth and mortgaged their future for a century, and all for nothing. 
This is not a war in which the stake is territory or the sphere of influence 
of one nation over another. The Allies cannot concede peace until they 
conquer it. When they do so, it will be permanent. Otherwise they fail. 

There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which Presi- 
dent Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring about a 
peace that helped the parties to a settlement. The principle at stake and 
the power and territory were of such a character that a settlement might 
be made substantially permanent. But the present issue is like that in 
our Civil War, which was whether the Union was to be preserved and 
the cancer of slavery was to be cut out. Peace proposals to President 
Lincoln were quite as numerous as those of to-day, and were moved by 
quite as high motives. But there was no compromise possible. Either 
slavery and disunion lost or won. So to-day the great moral object of 
the war must be achieved or defeated. 

An organization of citizens in the United States, 
THE LEAGUE TO , .it . t? ^ d u u 

ENFORCE PEACE known as the League to Enforce Peace, has been 

active for three years past in promoting its propa- 
ganda. There is a similar association in England. In that League are 
many persons who for years urged the settlement of all international 
controversies by arbitration or judicial decision. The vortex of death 
and destruction for the peoples of the world, which the breaking out of 
the war portended, roused these peace lovers and promoters to devise a 
plan for avoiding war after this should end. 

The plan is a simple one. It looks to a league of all nations in which 
all agree, first, that legal international controversies shall be heard and 
decided by a Court ; second, that controversies not to be settled on prin- 
ciples of law shall be submitted to a Commission of Conciliation for 
recommendation of a settlement; third, that the united forces of the 
nations of the League shall resist any nation beginning war before the 
quarrel has been submitted to one tribunal or the other, and been decided. 
The American League has not thought it wise to attempt to enforce the 
judgment or the settlement recommended. Its scheme is only to restrain 
the contending parties from resorting to war until after the peaceable 
procedure has been had and the decision rendered. The promoters of the 
League believe that the delay and deliberation arising from this enforced 



The; Monaci^ oi^ a Premature; Pe;aci5 5 

peaceable procedure before a war can be begun will prevent most wars, 
and that it is wiser not to attempt too much, lest the nations decline to 
restrain their freedom of action so much. The English plan is more 
ambitious in providing that if the council of nations so decide they must 
enforce the judgment or settlement. 

Whatever the detailed stipulations of such a league, however, its 
operation and success must depend on the obligations of the treaty stipula- 
tions. Unless their binding effect is recognized by the nations as a sacred 
principle, the stipulations of the league will be "writ in water." The 
revelations and disclosures of this war will satisfy the members of the 
league that as long as the present military caste controls the German 
military and foreign policy, the league is impracticable, and would not 
be worth the parchment on which its obligations would be recorded. 
Why have they reached this conclusion? Why, as citizens of the United 
States, and as citizens of the world anxious to promote peace, do they 
feel that any proposal of peace in the present situation would defeat 
permanent world peace, and should be opposed by them with all the 
energy they can command? The answer to this question must be found 
in the causes of this war and the revelations it has made of Germany's 
purpose, stripped of confusing pretence and naked for the whole world 
to see. 

Germany was long divided into little states, kingdoms, duchies and 
other forms of one-man rule. She was the prey of political intrigue 
and manipulation of other powers. All her well-wishers hoped for and 
looked forward to her union. The Germans of yore had loved freedom. 
We Anglo-Saxons were Germans once and our representative system can 
be traced back to institutions found first in the forests of Germany. In 
the wars of the first Napoleon, Prussia and other German states were 
subjected to a great humiliation. But the German youth rebelled, organized 
themselves into military reserves, and finally contributed much to the 
defeat of the man whose lust for universal power finds its counterpart 
in the aim of the Hohenzollerns of to-day. The Holy Alliance, retaining 
the principle of the divine right of kings, and supporting it in all of 
Germany, left no opportunity for the free exercise of political power by 
these liberty-loving German youth. In 1848 democratic revolutions 
occurred throughout Germany and in Austria, but they were overcome. 
Many of the leaders came to the United States and with their followers 
became our best adopted citizens. When our Civil War came on, their 
hatred of slavery led them to volunteer for their adopted country, and 
every battlefield of the war was wet with German blood. 



6 The Mknacu of a Prumaturu Peace 

In Germany itself, however, the Hberal element was not 
THE GERMAN allowed to work out its hopes. It had looked to a united 

irv ^^^ liberal Germany with a government based on the 

representative system. It was not to be. Under the first 
William with his Prime Minister Bismarck, who came to power in 1862, 
a definite plan was adopted of perfecting the already well-disciplined 
Prussian army so that by "blood and iron" the unity of Germany should 
be achieved. The whole Prussian nation was made into an army, and 
it soon became a machine with a power of conquest equaled by no other. 
The cynical, unscrupulous, but effective, diplomacy of Bismarck first united 
Prussia with Austria to deprive Denmark of Schleswig-Holstein by force, 
then secured a quarrel with Austria over the spoils, and deprived her 
of all influence over the German states by humiliating defeat in the six 
weeks' war of 1866. After this war, several German states were annexed 
forcibly to Prussia and offensive and defensive alliances were made 
with others. 

Then in 1870 the occasion was seized, when it was known that France 
was not prepared, to strike at her. France was beaten, and Alsace and 
Lorraine were taken from her. The German Empire was established with 
a Prussian King at its head. France was made to pay an indemnity of 
one billion dollars, with which the military machine of Germany was 
strengthened and improved. Then Germany settled down to a period of 
peace to digest the territory which by these three wars had been absorbed. 
Bismarck's purpose in maintaining the superiority of his army was to 
retain what had been taken by blood and iron, and at the same time by 
a period of prolonged peace to give to Germany a full opportunity for 
industrial development and the self-discipline necessary for the highest 
efficiency. 

The marvelous work which the Germans have accomplished in their 
field of industrial activity is known to all. The prosperity which followed 
increased the population of Germany and crowded her borders. Bismarck 
was dismissed by the present Emperor, but his policy of maintaining the 
highest efficiency of the army was continued. And then, as the success 
of the German system in the material development of the Empire showed 
itself and became the admiration of the world, the destiny of Germany 
grew larger in the eyes of her Emperor and her people, and the blood 
and iron policy which had been directed first to the achievement of the 
unity of Germany and then to the defense of the German Empire in the 
enjoyment of what had been taken in previous wars, expanded into a 
dream of Germanizing the world. The German people were impregnated 
with this idea by every method of official instruction. A cult of philosophy 



The Menace; of a Premature: Peace 7 

to spread the propaganda developed itself in the universities and schools. 
The principle was that the state could do no wrong, that the state was an 
entity that must be sustained by force; that everything else must be 
sacrificed to its strength ; that the only sin the state could commit was 
neglect and failure to maintain its power. 

With that dogmatic logic which pleases the German mind, and to 
which it readily adapts itself, this proposition easily led into the further 
conclusion that there could be no international morality ; that morality and 
its principles applied only to individuals, but that when the action of the 
state was involved, considerations of honor, of the preservation of obliga- 
tions solemnly made, must yield if the interests of the state required. 
These were the principles taught by Treitschke in the University of Berlin 
and maintained by German economic philosophers and by the representa- 
tive of the military regime in Bernhardi. 

Bismarck had been keen enough in his diplomacy to await 
the opportunity that events presented for seeming to be forced 
into a war which he had long planned. This was the case with Denmark. 
This was the case with Austria. This was the case with France. German 
diplomacy has lost nothing of this characteristic in the present war. 
Germany did not plan the killing of the Austrian Archduke and his con- 
sort, but the minute that that presented the likelihood of war, Germany 
accepted it as the opportunity for her to strike down her neighbors, 
Russia and France, and to enlarge her power. She gladly gave her consent 
to the ultimatum of Austria to Servia that was sure to bring on war, 
and then posed as one driven into war by the mobilization of Russia. 
She knew that Russia was utterly unprepared. She knew that France 
was unprepared. She knew that Great Britain was unprepared. She 
herself was ready to the last cannon and the last reservist. Therefore, 
when appealed to by Great Britain and by all the other Powers to inter- 
vene and prevent Austria from forcing a universal war, Germany declined 
to act. Not a telegram or communication between Germany and Austria 
has ever been given to the public to show the slightest effort to induce 
delay by Austria. While Germany would pose as having acted only as 
Austria's ally and as unwilling to influence her against her interest and 
independent judgment, the verdict of history unquestionably will be that 
the war is due to Germany's failure to prevent it and to her desire to 
accept the opportunity of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke 
as a convenient time to begin a war she long intended. The revelation 
of their unpreparedness is sufificient to show that England, France and 
Russia did not conspire to bring the war on. On the other hand, before 



8 Tiiiv Menace; of a Premature Peace 

the war began Germany had constructed a complete system of strategic 
railways on her Belgian border, adapted not to commercial uses, but only 
to the quick invasion of Belgium. 



A CLEAR CASE 
AGAINST GERMANY 



Indeed, every fact as the war has developed forms 
one more circumstance in the irrefragable case 
against Germany as the Power responsible for this 
world disaster. The preparation of fifty years, the false philosophy of 
her destiny and of the exaltation of force, had given her a yearning for 
conquest, for the expansion of her territory, the extension of her influence, 
and the Germanization of the world. She alone is responsible for the 
incalculable destruction of this war. She led on in the armament of the 
world that she might rule it. She promoted therefore the armament of 
other nations. Her system was followed, though not as effectively, by 
other countries in pure defense of their peace and safety. 

And now her Emperor, her Prussian military caste, and her won- 
derful but blinded people, have the blood of the millions who have suffered 
in this world catastrophe on their hands. The German military doctrine, 
that when the interests of the state are concerned, the question is one of 
power and force, and not of honor or obligation or moral restraint, finds 
its most flagrant examples in Germany's conduct of this war. 

Her breach of a solemn obligation entered into by her and all the 
powers of Europe, in respect to Belgium's neutrality, was its first exhibi- 
tion. It was followed by the well-proven deliberate plan of atrocities 
against the men, women and children of a part of Belgium in order to 
terrorize the rest of the population into complete submission. It was shown 
in the prompt dropping of bombs on defenceless towns from Zeppelins 
and other aircraft ; in the killing of non-combatant men, women and 
children by the naval bombardment of unfortified towns; in the use of 
liquid fire and poison gases in battle. All of these had been condemned as 
improper in declarations in the Hague treaties. 



The Reptile Fund, which was used under Bismarck for the 

GERMAN bribery of the press and for the maintenance of a spy svs- 
INXRIGUE "' 

tern, has been enlarged and elaborated, so that German 

bribery has extended the world over, and the German espionage has 

exceeded anything known to history. The medieval use by the Hohen- 

zollerns of dynastic kinship has paralyzed the action of the peoples of 

Greece and Russia. And now we know by recent revelation, of the aid 

that Swedish diplomats are furnishing to Germany in her submarine 



The; ]\Ie;nace; of a Premature; Peace; 9 

warfare against neutral ships, and that it is made possible by the influence 
of the German consort of the Swedish Kingf. 

Intrigue, dishonor, cruelty, have characterized the entire military policy 
of Germany. The rules of international law have been cast to the winds. 
The murderous submarine has sunk without warning the non-combatant 
commercial vessels of the enemy and sent their officers, their crews and 
their passengers, men, women and children, to the bottom wdthout warn- 
ing. Not only has this policy been pursued against enemy commercial 
vessels, but also against neutral commercial vessels, and parts of the 
crew have been assembled on the submarines and then the submarine 
has been submerged and the victims left struggling in the ocean's waste 
to drown. We find a German diplomat telegraphing from a neutral port 
to the German headquarters advising that if the submarine be used against 
the vessels of that neutral power it leave no trace of the attack. In other 
words, the murder of the crews must be complete, because "dead men tell 
no tales." 

Having violated the neutrality of Belgium, having broken its sacred 
obligations to that country and her people, it is now enslaving them by 
taking them from Belgium and enforcing their labor in Germany. This 
is contrary to every rule of international law, and is in the teeth of the 
plainest principles of justice and honor. All these things are done for the 
state. It is not that the nature of the German people generally is cruel — • 
that is not the case. But the minds of the German people have been 
poisoned with this false philosophy; and the ruling caste in Germany, in 
its desperate desire to win, has allowed no consideration of humanity or 
decency or honor to prevent its use of any means which in any way could 
by hook or crook accomplish a military purpose. 

When the war began, Germany was able to convince her people 
and to convince many in the world that the issue in the war was not 
the exaltation of the military power of Germany and the expansion of 
her plan of destiny, but that it was a mere controversy between the 
Teuton and the Slav, and Germany asked with great plausibility, "Will 
you have the world controlled by the Slav or by the German?" Those 
who insisted that the issue was one of militarism against the peace of the 
world, of democracy against military autocracy, of freedom against military 
tyranny, were met with the argument : "Russia is an ally. She is a greater 
despotism and a greater military autocracy than Germany." As the war 
wore on, the real issue was cleared of this confusion. Russia became a 
democracy. The fight was between governments directed by their people 
on the one hand, and the military dynasties of Germany, Austria and 
Turkey, on the other. 



10 The: Menace: of a Premature: Peace; 

President Wilson says the Allies are fighting to make 
P _ _ «r »„ the world safe for democracy. Some misconception has 
been created on this head. The Allies are not struggling 
to force a particular form of government on Germany. If the German 
people continue to wish an Emperor it is not the purpose of the Allies 
to require them to have a republic. Their purpose is to end the military 
policy and foreign policy of Germany that looks to the maintenance 
of a military and naval machine, with its hair-trigger preparation for 
use against her neighbors. If this continues, it will entail on every 
democratic government the duty of maintaining a similar armament in 
self-defense, or, what is more likely, the duty will be wholly or partly 
neglected. Thus the policy of Germany, with her purpose and destiny, 
will threaten every democracy. This is the condition which it is the 
determined purpose of the Allies, as interpreted by President Wilson, 
to change. 

How is the change to be effected? By defeating Germany in this 
war. The German people have been very loyal to their Emperor, because 
his leadership accords with the false philosophy of the state and German 
destiny, with which they have been indoctrinated and poisoned. A defeat 
of the military machine, a defeat of the Frankenstein of the military 
dynasty to which they have been sacrificed, must open their eyes to the 
hideous futility of their political course. The German Government will 
then be changed as its people will have it changed, to avoid a recurrence 
of such a tragedy as they have deliberately prepared for themselves. 

Men who see clearly the kind of peace which we must have, in order 
to be a real and lasting peace, can have no sympathy therefore with a 
patched-up peace, one made at a council table, the result of diplomatic 
chaffering and bargaining. Men who look forward to a League of the 
World to Enforce Peace in the future can have no patience with a com- 
promise that leaves the promoting cause of the present awful war un- 
affected and unremoved. This war is now being fought by the Allies as 
a League to Enforce Peace. Unless they compel it by victory, they do 
not enforce it. They do not make the military autocracies of the world 
into nations fit for a World League, unless they convince them by a 
lesson of defeat. 

When the war came on, there were a few in the 

United States who felt that the invasion of Belgium 

required a protest on the part of our government, and some indeed who 

felt that we should join in the war at once. But the great body of the 

American people, influenced by our traditional policy of avoiding European 



.._ . U 



The Menace; of a Premature Peace 11 

quarrels, stood by the Administration in desiring to maintain a strict 
neutrality. I think it is not unfair to say that a very large proportion 
of the intelligent and thinking people of the United States — and that means 
a great majority — sympathized with the Allies in the struggle which they 
were making. But many with us of German descent, prompted by a pride 
in the notable advance in the world of German enterprise, German in- 
genuity, German discipline, German efficiency, and regarding the struggle 
as an issue between Teuton and Slav, extended their sympathy to their 
Fatherland. 

As conscientiously as possible, the Administration and the country 
pursued the course laid down by international law as that which a neutral 
should take. International law is the rule of conduct of nations toward 
one another, accepted and acquiesced in by all nations. It is not always 
as definite as one would like, and the acquiescence of all nations is not 
always as clearly established as it ought to be. But in the law of war as 
to capture at sea of commercial vessels, the principles have been estab- 
lished clearly by the decision of prize courts of all nations, English, 
American, Prussian and French. The right of non-combatants on com- 
mercial vessels, officers, crew and passengers, either enemy or neutral, to 
be secure from danger of life, has always been recognized and never 
contested. Nevertheless, Germany sank, without warning, 150 American 
citizens, men, women and children, and sent them to their death by a 
submarine torpedo, simply because they happened to be on English or 
American commercial vessels. We protested and Germany halted for a 
time. We thought that if we condoned the death of 150 we might still 
maintain peace with that Power. 

But it was not to be, and after more than a year Germany announced 
her purpose to resume this murderous and illegal course toward innocent 
Americans. Had we hesitated, we would have lost our independence as 
a people. We would have subscribed abjectly to the doctrine that might 
makes right. Germany left no door open to us as a self-respecting nation 
except that which led to war. She deliberately forced us into the ranks 
of her enemies, and she did it because she was obsessed with the belief 
that the submarine was the instrument of destruction by which she might 
win the war. She recked not that as she used it, it was a weapon of 
murder of innocents. Making military efficiency her god, and exalting 
the appliances of science in the killing of men, she ignored all other 
consequences. 

Germany's use of the submarine brought us into the war. But being 
in, we recognized as fully as any of our Allies do that its far greater 
issue is whether German militarism shall continue after this war to be a 



12 The Menace; of a Premature Peace 

threat to the peace of the world, or whether we shall end that threat by 
this struggle in which we are to spend our life's blood. We must not 
therefore be turned from the stern necessity of winning this war. 

When the war began and its horrible character was soon 
i<iQiiF disclosed, there were many religious persons who found 

their faith in God shaken by the fact that millions of 
innocent persons could be headed into this vortex of blood and destruc- 
tion without the saving intervention of their Creator. But the progress 
of the war has revealed much, and it has stimulated our just historic 
sense. It shows that the world had become, through the initiative of 
Germany and the following on of the other nations, afflicted with the 
cancer of militarism. God reveals the greatness of His poAj^er and His 
omnipotence not by fortuitous and sporadic intervention, but by the work- 
ing out of His inexorable law. A cancer if it is not to consume the body 
must be cut out, and the cutting out of it necessarily involves suffering 
and pain in the body. The sacrifices of lives and treasure are inevitable 
in the working out of the cure of the world malady. But we must win 
the war to vindicate this view. 

We are now able to see the providential punishment and weakness 
that follows the violation of moral law. The crass materialism of the 
German philosophy that exalts force above morality, power above honor 
and decency, success above humanity, has blinded the German ruling caste 
to the strength of moral motives that control other peoples, and involved 
them in the fundamental mistakes that will cause their downfall. They 
assumed that England, burdened with Ireland, would violate her own 
obligation and abandon Belgium and would leave her ally France to be 
deprived of all her colonial possessions. They assumed that France was 
decadent, permeated with socialism, and unable to make a contest in her 
state of unpreparedness. They assumed that England's colonies, attached 
only by the lightest tie, and entirely independent, if they chose to be, 
would not sacrifice themselves to help the mother land in her struggle. 
How false the German conclusion as to England's national conscience 
and fighting power, as to France's decadence and patriotic fervor and 
strength, and as to the filial loyalty of England's daughters! 

England and France since 1914 have been fighting the 

Of\he^ WAR ^^^^^^ °^ ^'^^ ^^°^^^ ^"^ fighting for us of America. The 
war has drained their vitality, strained their credit, ex- 
hausted their man-power, subjected many of their non-combatants to 
suffering and destruction, and they have the war weariness which dulls 



Th]5 Menace: oi' a Premature; Peace 13 

the earlier eager enthusiasm for the principles at stake. Now specious 
proposals for peace are likely to be most alluring to the faint-hearted, 
and most powerful in the hands of traitors. 

The intervention of the United States, by her financial aid, has 
helped much; but her armies are needed and she, a republic unprepared, 
required time to prepare. The war is now to be determined by the active 
tenacity of purpose of the contestants. England showed that tenacity in 
the wars of Napoleon. Napoleon succumbed. General Grant, in his 
Memoirs, says that the battle is won not in the first day, but by the com- 
mander and the army that is ready, even after apparent defeat, to begin 
the next day. It is the side that has the nerve that will win. The inter- 
vention of the United States has strengthened that nerve in England, 
France and Italy. But delay and disappointment give full opportunity 
to the lethargic, the cowardly, the factious, to make the task of the patriot 
and the loyal men doubly heavy. This is the temper of the situation 
among our European allies. 

With us at home the great body of our people are loyal and strong 
for the war. Of course a people, however intelligent, when very pros- 
perous and comfortable, and not well advised as to the vital concern 
they have in the issue of a war across a wide ocean and thousands of 
miles away, it takes time to convince. But we have, for the first time in 
the history of our republic, begun a war right. We have begun with a 
conscription law which requires service from men of a certain age from 
every walk of life. It is democratic in principle, and yet it offers to the 
Government the means of selection so that those who shall be sent to the 
front may be best fitted to represent the nation there, and those best 
able to do the work in field and factory essential to our winning at the 
front, may be retained. We have adopted a merit system of selecting 
from the intelligent and educated youth of the country the company 
officers. The machinery of the draft naturally creaked some because it 
had to be so hastily constructed, but on the whole it has worked well. 
Those who devised it and have carried it through are entitled to great credit. 

The lessons of the war are being learned and applied in our war 
equipment and in neutralizing, by new construction, the submarine destruc- 
tion of commercial transports. Adequate measures for the raising of 
the money needed to finance the war and finance our Allies, have been 
carried through Congress. Food conservation is provided for. But of 
course it took time for a hundred million of peace lovers and non-militarists 
to get ready, however apt, however patriotic, however determined. 

"It is dogged that does it." Stamp on all proposals of peace as ill 
advised or seditious, and then time will make for our certain victory. 



14 The; Menace of a Premature Peace 

While there has been pro-German sentiment in the United States, 
and while the paid emissaries of Germany have been busy trying to 
create as much opposition to the war as possible, and have found a 
number of weak dupes and unintelligent persons who don't understand 
the importance of the war, to aid them, our allies should know that 
the whole body of the American people will earnestly support the Presi- 
dent and Congress in carrying out the measures which have been adopted 
by the United States to win this war. 

When the war is won, the United States will wish to be 
PFACE THAT 

. . o^ heard and will have a right to be heard as to the terms of 
WILL LAST ATA1 TT • 1 <-. -11 • • 

peace, ihe United States will insist on a just peace, not 

one of material conquest. It is a moral victory the world should win. I 
think I do not mistake the current of public sentiment throughout our 
entire country in saying that our people will favor an international agree- 
ment by which the peace brought about through such blood and suffering 
and destruction and enormous sacrifice shall be preserved by the joint 
power of the world. Whether the terms of the League to Enforce Peace 
as they are will be taken as a basis for agreement, or a modified form, 
something of the kind must be attempted. 

Meantime, let us hope and pray that all the Allies will reject proposals 
for settlement and compromise of every nature; that they will adhere 
rigidly and religiously to the principle that until a victorious result gives 
security that the world shall not again be drenched in blood through the 
insanely selfish policy of a military caste ruling a deluded people intoxi- 
cated with material success and power, there will be no peace. 



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